MANCHESTER UNITED boss Jose Mourinho has hit out at criticism for his handling of Marcus Rashford.

Manchester United striker Rashford enjoyed a fine international break, scoring in matches against Spain and Switzerland.

He was, however, encouraged to leave Old Trafford in the wake of his Wembley heroics with many blasting Mourinho for failing to give him enough game time.

But Mourinho has now hit back at his Manchester United critics in a bizarre rant, where he channelled his inner Louis van Gaal by reeling off statistics to journalists in the room.

“Speaking about Marcus, I think I can expect that Sunday I'm going to be highly criticised for not playing him tomorrow, because some of the boys are really obsessed with me and some of them have a problem with some compulsive lies,” said Mourinho.

“So I can expect that Sunday some of them will wake up in the morning and the first thing they think of is Jose Mourinho, so I can imagine on Sunday I am going to be criticised for not playing Marcus but it's not my fault, he's suspended, so probably you should remind them he is suspended and cannot play.

“So I'm going to do something, not for you, but the United fans, and I think I hold myself to the United fans and so for them I am going to spend two mins with you.

“In 2016-17, Marcus Rashford played 32 Premier League matches, 11 Europa League matches, including the final, three FA Cup matches, six League Cup matches, including the final, and the Community Shield.

“He had 53 appearances, but if you want to take to the minutes of play, he played 3,068, and if you wan to divide that by 90-minute matches, he played 34.2 matches of 90-minute matches in 2016-17.

“In 2017-18, he played 35 Premier League matches, eight in the Champions League, five in the FA Cup, three League Cup matches and the European Super Cup final.

“He played a total of 52 matches with 2,676 mins, and if you divide that by 90, it gives you 29.7 matches, so with me, in two seasons, he had 105 appearances, 5,774 mins, 63.7 matches of 90 minutes, including five finals, so the people speaking about these minutes, I think they are a bit confused.

“Marcus is not Dominic Solanke, not Ruben Loftus-Cheek, not Dominic Calvert-Lewin, he's Marcus Rashford, a Manchester United player, with an incredible number of appearances and an incredible number of minutes played at the highest level in the best possible competitions.

“So Manchester United supporters, for you and just for you, to know what we are doing with Marcus, Luke Shaw, Jesse Lingard, Scott McTominay, that's what we are doing here.”

Mourinho's weird rant came after Jamie Carragher urged Rashford to swap United for Everton.

"Romelu Lukaku is in front of Rashford and I don't see Rashford displacing him as long as he is there," he said.

"But remember when Lukaku was at Chelsea and he had to come away and go to Everton. Then he ended up as top scorer and got his move to Man Utd.

"Possibly Everton is the sort of club you are looking at, just below the top six, for someone like Rashford, similar to what Lukaku did.

"You know you are going to play every week as the centre-forward and you know if you have a couple of games where you don't score then you are still going to play the next week.

"Last season after they played Brighton away, Mourinho had a little pop at him and Lukaku went straight back into the team. That's the problem you will always have.

"Does he have to leave United? I think so. Is he good enough to displace Lukaku? Is Rashford good enough to be Manchester United's centre-forward for them trying to win the Premier League or the Champions League? He may not be.

"It gets to the stage where you want to play every week. Will he be an England regular or be Manchester United's real centre-forward where you know, when the team is picked every week, that he is in it. Will it ever get to that stage?”